Ben Bernanke used the fake name Edward Quince
This is one of the interesting facts about Ben Bernanke that may surprise many people. It may occasionally be accepted for someone who works for the police or an intelligence agency to use a secret identity, but assuming a false identity while one is a central banker is not. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, that's exactly what former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did during the worst of the financial crisis. According to documents provided as proof in an AIG shareholder lawsuit against the U.S. government, Bernanke used the alias Edward Quince in a series of emails with colleagues about the precarious financial situation insurance giant American International Group (AIG) found itself in during the fall of 2008.
Bernanke did use the fictitious name, a Fed spokesperson told the Journal, but she made no mention of why. As the credit markets froze up and the company's access to short-term finance was in peril, AIG held discussions with Fed officials about getting government financial aid. The pseudonym was only finally revealed on Wednesday, six years after the disaster, in a Washington courtroom during the trial surrounding the government's contentious rescue of AIG.
A Fed spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that Bernanke employed a pseudonym, despite being the most influential person throughout the financial crisis in determining the Fed's policies, but she was unable to say why or whether the moniker had any special meaning for him. According to WSJ.com, Edward Quince participated in an email discussion regarding AIG in September 2008 that also involved Tim Geithner, the head of the New York Fed at the time. Quince was Bernanke's email pseudonym, a Justice Department attorney testified in court, and Geithner concurred. AIG ultimately received a total federal bailout of US$182.3 billion throughout the crisis. The corporation paid it all back by December 2012, leaving American taxpayers with a profit of around US$23 billion.
